The Corbin necklace
the elevator. Try participating in a scene like that upon a pair of
crutches before you allow yourself to feel too contemptuous over this
admission.
Bruce had already started for the door, but he couldn’t go in a
straight line to it because of the corner of the billiard table. Before
he could get around this obstruction a new voice spoke and halted him
in his tracks.
“Really there’s no need for any sort of violence,” it stated,
irritably. “I’ll open the door myself. I’ll hold my hands out before
me and you’ll see that it won’t be necessary to shoot. That’s quite
understood, is it?”
“Perfectly,” Mr. Smith agreed. “We won’t do anything impulsive. Open
the door.”
The door swung open noiselessly, and there, true to his promise, stood
a man holding out a pair of empty hands.
His appearance is rather hard to describe, since the obvious facts
about it seemed fortuitous and somehow contradictory to the truer ones.
He was, for example, unmistakably dirty and disheveled. Yet he looked
as if he ought to be scrupulously clean and tidy. You felt that it was
contradictory to his nature to go more than twenty-four hours without
a shave, although a shadow of colorless beard upon his plump cheeks
proclaimed that he had done so. He was plump, although he happened
just now to be rather haggard and hungry-looking. His suit of clothes
was cheap and shapeless, yet something about him proclaimed him a fop.
His grimy hands were small and finely formed, and as fastidious as Mr.
Smith’s.
His glance shifted swiftly from one to another of us, coming to rest at
last in sour contemplation upon Punch.
The boy had been gazing at him intently, groping for an identification.
Now he got it.
“Why,” he cried, “he’s the man who was hanging the new window shades.
He must have been in there ever since Wednesday.”
That afforded me a grin. I turned to Mr. Smith. “That’s been Punch’s
theory from the beginning, you know,” I remarked. “He discussed with me
Wednesday morning the danger that one of the artisans about the place
would conceal himself in the house and steal the necklace when he got
a chance. He spent most of that day and the next patrolling the house,
trying to guard against that very thing happening.”
“Good for Punch,” said Mr. Smith, but in so preoccupied a tone that it
fell far short of the handsome acknowledgment I wanted for the boy’s
cleverness.
I persisted, speaking now to Punch. “I wonder if you were right about
the actual moment when the imitation necklace was taken?”
Without pausing I put the thing up to the burglar. “Was it Thursday
afternoon about two o’clock, just before the guests got here, that you
made your raid on Mrs. Corbin’s safe?”
The man didn’t answer. But to put it this way doesn’t at all describe
what happened. It was utterly preposterous. This trapped little rat of
a thief, haggard, grimy, unshaved, tried to make me feel--and almost, I
swear, succeeded--as if I’d just spoken to a duke to whom I’d not been
properly introduced. He did it with a perfectly impassive face and an
almost imperceptible turning of the shoulders.
But at that, old Mr. Smith got what he’d been looking for.
“Raglan, by George!” he exclaimed. “This is a real pleasure. But man,
I’d hardly have known you!”
The thief showed no reciprocal delight in the recognition. Indeed his
look of disgust deepened. But he spoke for the first time since he’d
opened the door.
“Really,” he said, “I should hope not. I’ve been living in that filthy
box room three days, feeding on a particularly nasty sort of American
milk chocolate. I haven’t been able to shave since Thursday night.”
He spoke with a marked British accent, which didn’t, however, satisfy
my ear. It was just about as good an imitation, I decided, as
Victoria’s Japanese pearls.
“Horribly unpleasant, I should think,” Mr. Smith agreed sympathetically.
Then he explained to the rest of us. “Mr. Raglan is not only one of the
most expert gem thieves in the world; he’s also admitted to be the best
dressed man in his profession.”
Bruce Applebury wasn’t in a sympathetic mood. He made no acknowledgment
whatever of the honor of the introduction to so eminent a craftsman. He
said to Mr. Smith, “We must call the police at once, of course. Shall I
telephone?”
“Oh, there’s no hurry, I think,” said Mr. Smith. “It’s still
frightfully early.”
He turned to the thief. “Raglan,” he said, “I’m going to propose a
bargain. You produce the necklace; save us the trouble of a search for
it. If you’ll do that, I’ll take the liberty of promising you, although
I’m merely one of Mrs. Corbin’s guests, a bath and a shave, a change of
linen, and a really good breakfast. All that before presenting you to
the police--and the photographers.”
“Done,” said Raglan, without a moment’s hesitation. “Thanks very much.”
He slid his right hand under his coat toward his left armpit.
“Look out!” Bruce cried sharply. “He’s after a gun.”
Raglan’s answer was to unbutton his coat and throw it back, showing
that there was no weapon there.
But Mr. Smith had betrayed no perturbation, even before he got this
reassurance. “Unless Raglan has changed his well-known methods,” he
said, “he doesn’t carry a gun. He has a strong aversion to the more
unpleasant forms of violence. He has compromised with necessity to the
length of a delicately wielded blackjack, and you’ll probably find that
his equipment includes a small bottle of chloroform. But it’s not on
record that he’s ever killed any one.”
Raglan made no comment upon these remarks. He was busy with the lining
of his sleeve, just beneath the armpit. He had, it appeared, a long
pocket in there. Presently he pulled out the necklace.
Here and now, I make my apologies for the banal philosophizings I had
addressed, at lunch time on the previous day, to its substitute. It was
worth all the labor it had cost. It was above price--a masterpiece.
The glory of it held the five of us spellbound, the connoisseur, the
disappointed thief, the lover who had tried to include it in his
bargain, the small boy and myself. We didn’t speak; we hardly breathed.
I think Raglan might have bolted had he not been bound by the same
enchantment as the rest of us.
At last old Mr. Smith broke the spell.
“Punch,” he said, “take this down-stairs and give it to your
grandmother. Tell her that none of her guests nor of her family had
anything to do with its disappearance. Nor her servants either. Ask her
if she’s willing that Belden should send up a good hearty breakfast to
an old acquaintance of mine whom I am entertaining in my room.”
Punch’s hands were shaking as Mr. Smith gently deposited the treasure
in the cup he made of them. I remembered the negligence with which the
imitation had been reconsigned to the boy’s old pocket handkerchief the
day before and wondered that I had not guessed the truth from that.
“I’m to tell Gran nothing but that?” Punch asked, his eyes dancing with
excitement. “And I’m not to tell any one else anything at all?”
“Not if you can help it,” said old Eagle-Eye with a grin. “We must keep
our bargain with Raglan if we can. Go on and find Belden, if your
grandmother gives you leave, and order the breakfast from him. Then
come back here.”
Punch darted off on his errand.
I think perhaps the return of the necklace to Mrs. Corbin served to
remind Bruce of his own injuries and disappointments. It was with a
very sulky expression that he watched the boy disappear down the stairs.
“I really can’t understand,” he said, turning impatiently back to
Mr. Smith, “why a professional criminal should be treated with such
extraordinary consideration. He ought to be in handcuffs now and on his
way to jail.”
“Surely you can understand keeping a bargain,” Mr. Smith answered
suavely. “I’ve heard you discourse feelingly on that subject within the
hour.”
Applebury’s only reply to that was an angry shrug of the shoulders. I
think he suspected the old gentleman of meaning to let the thief go
altogether now that the necklace was recovered.
I didn’t go as far as that, but I was a little uneasy lest his zest in
the new game he was playing--I hadn’t yet made out what it was--should
betray the old gentleman into trusting too far to Mr. Raglan’s dislike
of violence.
“My room and bath are entirely at your disposal now, Mr. Raglan,”
he said, leading the way toward his door and opening it. “As to the
change of linen I promised you, I’m afraid I’d been counting on Mr.
Applebury’s acquiescence in my bargain. My own perhaps can be made to
serve.”
Bruce’s face on hearing the suggestion that he provide the burglar
with a shirt and a suit of underclothes was a study in outraged
astonishment. But he was prevented from further expressing his feelings
by Raglan’s answer. Raglan, it appeared, was equally affronted by the
proposal.
“That won’t be necessary,” he said coldly. “I have a bag with me.
Perhaps the young man will bring it out. I’d be glad to fetch it myself
but I don’t suppose that would quite meet your ideas. It’s standing on
the first box around the corner.”
“Get it out, will you, Applebury?” said old Mr. Smith.
I really thought Bruce would burst. His neck distinctly swelled above
his collar. But he marched off in high dudgeon toward the trunk closet,
to return a moment later lugging a big black case of a nondescript
sort. It was rather battered, and would have passed muster all right as
the sort of thing a workman could carry tools in.
Bruce set it down without a word, and walked off to his own room. I
have never seen him, I remark with thankfulness, since.
Raglan picked up the bag and followed Mr. Smith into his room, I
swinging along after them on my crutches, feeling rather nervous over
Bruce’s defection. That little man might easily be too much, I thought,
for Mr. Smith and me.
Raglan would have carried the bag straight on through into the bathroom
if Mr. Smith hadn’t halted him.
“I think perhaps,” he said, “you’d better take off your clothes out
here. Then you can bathe and shave in privacy, and we can wait your
convenience.”
I saw the point to that, as Raglan did, and felt a little better. There
was a window in the bathroom, big enough for a man to climb out of, and
there might be a handy down-spout that would take him to the ground.
But no thief, no matter how desperate, would try to escape without his
clothes.
Raglan, stripped to his underwear, opened the bag, lifted out a tray of
tools, and selected his clean linen. Then he went into the bathroom and
locked the door behind him.
“I suppose,” I remarked, “he might have had that necklace hidden where
we’d have had the devil’s own time finding it.”
“No, I hardly think so,” Mr. Smith dissented politely. “No, that’s not
the reason I’m coddling him. He’s dirty and miserable, and ravenously
hungry, I suspect. When he’s clean and fed, he’ll be expansive. I want
him to tell me how he did it, and if they’ll only let us alone for half
an hour, I believe he will.--Ah, here’s Punch. Now we’ll know.”
CHAPTER XVIII
PEACOCK FEATHERS
As usual, Mr. Smith turned out to be right. You wouldn’t have known
Raglan for the same man when he came out of that bathroom, and
the transformation was completed when he had arrayed himself with
scrupulous care and deliberation in an exquisitely tailored light gray
suit with a fine blue stripe in it, symphonically harmonious with his
socks and his cravat, brushed his hair, and settled himself at the
little table where his breakfast was arrayed. I wondered as I watched
his delicate approach to the chilled grapefruit whether, had I seen him
first like this, I should have detected anything imitative or unreal
about his well-bred English accent.
Punch had been watching these proceedings with breathless interest.